So I currently have an application independent of Play which may take a long time in its execution.
I want to put a UI on top of it using Play where the application may be invoked and to display some of the details of the execution inside of the application to the user. I would like the page to be updated automatically as the execution proceeds e.g. if a variable in the application increments this would be reflected on the page.
I'm not sure where to begin with this - do I need to split the application up into models + controllers ? Or do I just need to have code in a controller to instantiate the classes I have already coded and call the methods I need ?
What about constantly showing the execution state on the page?
Any resources I should know about/read ? Code examples?
Thanks
You may have already done so, but a good starting point is to create a skeleton Play application using the play new command, while referring the creating a new application section. You will have "views" (HTML template pages) and one controller (in Application.scala). You could add more controllers, but as you will have just a single page that should suffice.
You can add jars from your app (if it's a JVM app) to the lib directory of your Play application. From this: "Or do I just need to have code in a controller to instantiate the classes I have already coded and call the methods I need?" it sounds like you would be happy to have your app run in the process of the Jetty + Play server. Check out the Global object for starting your app at process startup.
Check out the section on comet sockets for sending updates from the Play app to the browser. You'll need a bit of Javascript in the web page.
Do you want to have this application running outside of play, perhaps on another server? Can you modify the application, or is this 3rd party software?
If so, you have to have some way to send data back and forth between your play front end and your application. You can either have your application expose a websocket, and then your play front end and your application can push data back and forth to each other. You can then have your client page have a websocket open to you play front end, and then play can push the updates to the client. If your application can't support a websocket, you could also expose some URLs on your front end for the application to POST to. You can then use some sort of message bus or database mechanism (RabbitMQ, redis, Mongo capped collection, or even just a shared Queue object) so that the front end websocket can get those updates and send them to the client.
Related
I have an application (Laravel + MongoDB running on Nginx) where I pull some data from the database and render it on the screen. The application focusses on multiple real life objects. Once an object is turned on (is_on equals to true in the database), the timer on the screen needs to start ticking. Once the object is turned off (is_on equals to false in the database) the clock stops ticking and resets to 0. The format of the clock is HH:MM:SS. So it shows how long the real life object is turned on.
My problem is that I don't really now how to save/implement such timer. When the user request the page, I pull the necessary data from the database. If I also save the timer in the database, you have to make a query every second which is very bad practice.
I remembered something about WebSockets and tried to look into them. I actually managed to build a basic Hello World chat application, but don't really know how to implement this in my project. There is no place for it in the database (because of the queries), so I don't really know where to save that timer on the server. I'm also doubting if WebSockets are the way to go.
So are WebSockets the way to go and if it is, can you guys point me in the right direction on how to implement this? If not, can you advise me what I should do?
Thanks in advance!
From your question:
I understand that the objects you print in the screen are modified by
users in the application, and your aim is to live forward those
modifications to other active client instances of your application.
In that case, as you mention, I would point you to websockets. They are a great way to feed information directly to the client, so the client receives the update signals and modify the interface, with no need of user action.
In order to implement the logic to notify the client, I recommend using a push approach, but this is really depending on what kind of clients you'd like to notify, since the push world is still a bit tricky.
Further readings for this websocket based push implementation:
Question about Push Flags:
Difference between push and urgent flags in TCP
If your client runs in browser or mobile this question is nice to read:
How to send push notification to web browser?
Also html5 websockets:
http://www.websocket.org/aboutwebsocket.html
As a sidenote:
A nice architecture for client-server live communication is based on node.js together with socket.io library offering good performance and not really complex implementation if you know what you do.
I'm working on the design of an with RAP/RWT, working under Tomcat. I'm learning RAP now, and a couple of questions come to my mind.
My application has a backend that works continuously gathering data from certain sources. On the other hand I want to create a frontend (RWT standalone application, or RAP with workbench functionality, not decided yet) running as a webapp.
First question: should I keep the backend as a separate process, and let the frontend RAP application communicate somehow with it? Or can I integrate everything together in the RAP application? Integrating everything together leads to the second question.
Second question: how can I detect from within the RAP application, when is the browser window/tab holding my app, closed? I would like to do some resource cleanup when the user closes the graphical interface (i.e. closes the browser). I cannot find anything equivalent to ApplicationWorkbenchWindowAdvisor#preWindowShellClose in RWT standalone applications. Same to dected when the application is started. In general, are there callbacks to follow the webapp lifecycle in RWT standalone applications?
Thanks a lot for your help!
Regarding your first point: When you use EJBs, please be aware that you can only directly access Java EE contexts from the request thread. This is not a problem when you run in JEE_COMPATIBILITY mode, but in SWT_COMPATIBILITY mode you may need to access your EJBs through RWT.requestThreadExec( Runnable );.
As for your second question, the RAP server is currently not informed on browser closes. This issue is discussed in bug 284273 - Session kill mechanism on browser close. It is not yet implemented because IIRC we couldn't find a reliable method of doing so that works in all browsers.
You could implement your own solution using a) the JSExecutor to put some JavaScript on the client that sends a request on browser close, and b) a PhaseListener that listens to these requests and terminates the session.
(*) First: decoupling is always the best practice. I use RMI stubs for receive notifications from backend application (another RMI object or EJB beans).
MyEJBListener stub = UnicastRemoteObject.exportObject(new MyEJBListener(display, page,
manager, handlermanager), 0)
MyEJBClient client1 = MyEJBLocator.findEJBClient("abc");
client1.addListener(stub);
In the stub use something like
public void notify(Event event){
UICallBack.activate("stubthread");
Display..asyncExec(new Runnable() {
// update event info
});
}
(*) Second:the method WorkbenchWindowAdvisor#postWindowClose can help you?, and call somethig method form backend app.
I have a program with about 8 Activity classes, and 1 Application class. I want my Application class to be able to communicate with every Activity, but on its own terms. I don't want the activity to ask the Application for data, I want the Application to send the Activity data. The problem with this, is that depending on the current state of the program I'm unsure what Activity will be open.
Is there a method of some sort which will send information from the Application to the CURRENT activity?
The Application class connects with an embedded Bluetooth Device and needs to receive different pieces of data depending on which Activity the user is currently in. I originally had it as a regular class, which was initialized in the MainMenu of my program and passed a Handler. However, it seemed like weak design to pass that Handler from Activity to Activity time and time again.
You could use a Callback Method
Every Activity has it's own callback method and registers that method onResume() in the Application Class. (it's like an onApplicationWantsToDoSomethingWithMeListener() ;)
or why not a Service in background? instead of the Application, since what you want sounds like a Service. More details?
EDIT:
I made a similar application with bluetooth, you should definetly use a Service for that, but you can communicate with your service per Application. Say the Service calls the callback in the Application look here for an implementation uf such a thing
Am new to android, am developing application with websevices using json parsing with httpget method,cant use http post method in android actually.
It working fine normally, but many time it shows the error on emulator like activity not responding force close activity.when i put that url in browser it shows the result .but i don't know why this activity not responding error came.
I think the httprequest took more time to retrieve the data from server,but am not sure. any one help me to how to avoid this error or how to minimize this .
I want know what are the possibilities to get this activity not responding error.
Thanks,
Lakshmanan
You need to perform blocking operations such as I/O in a separate thread - see the below linked resource:
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/design/responsiveness.html:
In Android, the system guards against applications that are insufficiently responsive for a period of time by displaying a dialog to the user, called the Application Not Responding (ANR) dialog, shown at right in Figure 1. The user can choose to let the application continue, but the user won't appreciate having to act on this dialog every time he or she uses your application. It's critical to design responsiveness into your application, so that the system never has cause to display an ANR dialog to the user.
To avoid ANR (Application Not Responding) dialog,
Your business logic code is inside doBackground() of AsyncTask and You may also need to override onPostExecute(),etc. After that it is better to invoke the async task in a Service (bound or normal service).
Service:
(bound service or normal service based on your requirement)
From, android office documentation:
A service is "bound" when an application component binds to it by calling bindService(). A bound service offers a client-server interface that allows components to interact with the service, send requests, get results, and even do so across processes with interprocess communication (IPC). A bound service runs only as long as another application component is bound to it. Multiple components can bind to the service at once, but when all of them unbind, the service is destroyed.
I have an iPad app that works both on and offline but when I am offline there are web service calls that will need to be made once online availability is an option again.
Example:
A new client is added to the app, this needs to be sent to the web service but since we are offline we dont want to slow the user down so we let them add locally and keep going but we need to remember that that call needs to be made to the web service when we can. Same thing for placing orders and such.
Is there some sort of queue that can be setup that will fire once we have connectivity?
I don't think the overhead of a heavyweight tool like MSMQ is needed for a simple action. You can use Core Data, persist managed objects with the data needed to call the web service, and only delete each managed object after a successful post. There might or might not be a way to capture an event when connectivity starts, but you can certainly create a repeating NSTimer when the first message is queued and stop it when there are no messages in the queue.
This library handles offline persistent message queueing for situations like you describe. It says alpha from a year ago, but I have confirmed it is used in production apps:
https://github.com/gcamp/IPOfflineQueue